


Broken Things

by onArete



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Bureau of Balance - Freeform, F/M, Julia is a badass robot, Julia replaces Noelle au, Team Sweet Flips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-17 08:19:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16091711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onArete/pseuds/onArete
Summary: In one universe, Lucas Miller pulls Noelle out of the Sea of Souls and into a hug-sized robot. In this universe, he pulls out Julia.





	Broken Things

Julia’s death is neither quick nor painless. She’s at the forge, making something menial, a nail or a horseshoe or a hinge, when the ground quakes beneath her.  
She drops her hammer. She’s running before she even thinks to do so, feet steady on the ground she’s walked her entire life.  
It’s sunset, casting rays of gold over Ravens’ Roost, which may be why it takes Julia a minute to realize there’s a fire. In fact, there’s lots of fires, and the ground is shaking, and a little girl stands alone, sobbing, in the street.

Julia scoops her up. Runs for the bridge.

Her only thought is to get off the column get off the column get off the column-- which is great except the bridge leading off of Craftsman’s Corridor is aflame. The pillar shakes, and Julia can feel it in her bones.

There’s no time to hesitate.

No time to run back for her dad or neighbor or best friend. The column is cracking and the bridge if burning and all she knows is that she and this little girl are going to die.

Julia looks down at the child she holds, looks at the fire-coated bridge. It hasn’t snapped yet.

“What’s your name, sweetheart?” she asks as she backs up.

“T... Theresa,” the girl says through tears.

“Well, Theresa,” Julia replies, fierce smile on her face, louder than the groaning of the column, “When you get over there, find someone to help you. Tell them Julia said so.”

She nods shakily, and Julia shifts her grip so she holds Theresa like a football. And as Craftsman’s Corridor rumbles once more with falling stone, she runs onto the bridge.

She feels the drop before it happens, just time enough to throw Theresa as far as she can to the other side.

And then there is smoke and ash and the worst noise Julia’s ever heard and she is falling, falling, falling, wind tossing her dreads to and fro.

She thinks of a red handkerchief and a chair that smells like lavender, and is watching the sunset as she hits the ground.

  
\----------------------------

  
A woman in a cowled robe offers her a hand. Julia takes it, rises to her feet.

“Hello, Julia,” she says softly. “I’m afraid I have to tell you that--”

“I’ve died.” The words hurt but they’re true. Julia is hovering over her own dead body, half-buried in rubble. “Craftsman’s Corridor?”

"I’m sorry--”

She nods, steps away from the woman. The other pillars of Ravens’ Roost still stand, but are blanketed in gray. “So... so nobody...”

A book pops into existence, and the robed woman flips through its pages. “No. Actually, wait-- a little girl named Theresa. Huh.”

Julia laughs, relief and exhaustion and shock all mingled together.

The woman offers her a hand. “Shall we go?”

Theresa is alive and her dad is not but Magnus is still out there and--

“Is there any way I can stay?”

She shakes her head, almost sadly. “You ready?”

Julia takes one last look at the shattered remains of her home. Her family. It is broken, and she is too. “Let’s go.”

  
\--------------------------

  
The Sea of Souls is peaceful, if nothing else. It’s a good place to work through trauma-- there’s a thousand billion other souls there willing to listen. Julia finds her dad, Steven. Sees his memories of her mother and the Hammer and Tongs and a long series of wars that she remembers now, too.

She’s in the Sea for a very long time. She meets her ancestors. Meets Theresa’s parents. Talks about Magnus to anybody who will listen. Tells them how she gave him her red handkerchief for luck and then she died and now she’s got nothing to tie her hair back with.

Julia meets a lot of other people, too. An old dwarven woman named Blaarg. A cute halfling named Noelle, not much younger than herself. Forty people who bring forty different memories of death by poison.

Julia likes people. She’s proficient in rustic hospitality. But she misses her husband with an ache that feels older than life itself.

So when she feels a tugging in her very core, Julia doesn’t resist its pull as she rises out of the Sea of Souls.

And Julia is gone.

  
\--------------------------

  
When she wakes, she speaks from a body that is not her own.

“Hello? Hello!” All she knows is her name, so that’s what she says. “I’m Julia. Hello?”

A human man screams, jumps backwards. Julia looks down at him. “Um. Hi?”

He screams again, but this time it’s triumphant.

“Helloooooooooo?” Julia asks. She’s not sure where she is or who she is and this screaming man just might have an answer for her.

He gathers himself together. “Uh, hi. I’m Lucas Miller. You’re Julia, you said?”

“Yeah. Where... where am I?” She looks down at her arms. They’re made of metal, and that seems strange, but she shakes away the nagging thought.

And Lucas explains. She’s a robot. On a floating lab. He made her. And would she like to work for him?

Julia can’t remember being anything but a robot. So she says yes, and follows Lucas into his med bay. It’s got a great view of the ocean-- the Stillwater Sea, she thinks, but doesn’t know where she learned the name. The perfect rest of the water seems familiar, too.

It is night. Julia watches the sunset from a robot body aboard Lucas Miller’s floating lab.

  
\--------------------------

  
Things go well, until they don’t.  
Lucas is kind of an ass, but he’s also a dweeb. And it’s hard to hate a kid whose mom she helped cremate.

But then Lucas gets some stone. Because first he’s refusing meals and being mean to the Hugbears and then the lab is turning into crystal and Julia’s trapped in the middle of it.

It’s a helpless, horrible feeling that’s intimately familiar.

  
\-------------------------

  
Julia is alone until she’s not.  
A trio of adventurers dressed in different shades of red comes barging in bringing robot arms and battle wounds and a promise to stop the lab from sinking and destroying the whole world. She offers a healing potion to the dwarf.

"I’m Julia,” she tells them because it’s the extent of what she knows about herself.

The biggest of the red spacesuited figures looks shattered. Looks familiar, like an itch she can’t scratch, like a word on the tip of her tongue.

“That... was my wife’s name,” he admits, and it feels like Julia has been snapped in half, broken in two.

His name is Magnus and he is so familiar that Julia ignores Merle sneaking into Lucas’s private chambers because she feels like she knows him but how?

His suit is the color of the handkerchief tied carefully around his neck.

Julia’s seen that handkerchief before. It smells like lavender.  
Julia doesn’t know how she knows this.

But then a creepy-ass rift has opened and crystal is falling through it and it’s all she can do to stay floating in the air. If she touches the crystallized floor, she’ll die-- again.

((Again?))

They book it for the arcane airlock. Julia and Magnus lead in tandem. It feels... right.  
Julia’s trying to think, trying to figure out why he seems so familiar.

But how would they have met before?

((Maybe she hasn’t always been a robot.))

Julia wakes up the Hugbears before the other three can. They bond over someone named Klaarg, which would be interesting, sure-- but something in Julia’s head ((head?)) is pounding and she’s got something like an ache in her gut ((how does she know what that feels like?)) and for one of the first times ((that she can remember)) Julia doesn’t have an answer.

The journey is quick. Julia advises the Hugbear family to stay in their quarters. They run into Boyland’s... corpse? Statue?

And then they’re fighting tardigrades.

Julia’s huge metal arms find a crossbow somewhere in the junkpile. It’s not muscle memory because she doesn’t have any. It’s instinct. It’s in her nature.

The bolt severs the tongue of a tardigrade about to hit Magnus, and he grins at her.

Out of the room, there’s two more people the others seem to know stuck in the ice room. Julia joins Magnus as he hacks away it it. They swing in tandem. The beat of their blows sounds like drums, like a music long-forgotten.

((And why shouldn’t it? They’ve always worked in sync.))

Magnus chops Merel’s arm off.

Things get even more confusing after that. Julia carries one-armed Merle to the med bay. They’re joined by Carey and Killian. Merle becomes part tree.

Julia listens quietly as Lucas explains the Cosmoscope and Maureen’s death. The sapphire catches her eye again and again-- it's familiar in the same way that the handkerchief is.

  
\-------------------------

  
Lucas paralyzes them and rushes for the elevator.

Julia’s good at rushing, too, though. She’s also good at protecting Magnus ((and he’s good at protecting her, until he left and she--)).

The elevator doors close fast, fast enough that she can only get a crossbow bolt through before Lucas is gone.

  
\---------------------------------

  
Julia fights the crystal golem alone until the others make their saving throws. She’s broken but damn she’s good at breaking.

  
\-----------------------------

  
They’ve taken Upsy downstairs, fought Magic Brian and Jenkins and Maarvey.

All dead, back to life.

Souls in robot bodies.

Souls.

Souls in--

                            robot bodies.

Julia freezes.

  
\----------------------

  
And Julia remembers.

  
\-----------------------------

  
Explaining takes precious time but it’s worth every second to mend what’s cracked. They hold each other tight, so tight, until Taako clears her throat and they move on.

  
\--------------------------

  
Julia upgrades to a gorilla robot, but keeps her crossbow.

  
\--------------------------

  
Julia doesn’t like being taken advantage of. Not Kalen, not Lucas, not _nobody_. So she’s there before Magnus, picking him up off the ground. Demanding answers.

He apologizes for pulling her out of the Sea of Souls. In her opinion, it’s the only good thing he’s done.

And Legion arrives. They’re familiar, too, in a way that scares Julia. That reminds her that no matter how many robot bodies she has, she’s still dead. And the Reaper fellow is probably after her, too.

Julia teams up with Carey and kicks ass. She’s gonna keep her husband safe.

  
\---------------------

  
He swallows the stone, and she falls in love with him all over again.

  
\------------------------

  
She wasn’t expecting Taako to stick up for her. To make sure she could return to the Bureau of Balance with Magnus.

But Julia is still very much a ghost, and death comes calling.

She’s ready to accept it, too-- she saw Magnus. _Held_ him. 

When he challenges Kravitz to a game, the stakes have never been higher.

Julia lifts the mirror off of him and slips an ace onto the top of his deck.

(“An ace for an ace,” she thinks, but can’t smile without a face and can’t say her joke without giving away the ruse.)

He wins. Julia stays.

  
\------------------------

  
“You’re welcome to room with Team Sweet Flips,” Lucretia says. “Or with Magnus, although I will warn you that Merle sleeps a la nude.”

Julia laughs. She likes the Director, likes her subtle humor.

“I’ll stick with Maggie.”

  
\------------------------

  
They skirt tentatively around each other for one, two, three nights.

“I... thought you might want this,” he says on the fourth, offering her the red handkerchief that was once hers and is now his and is now theirs.

Julia would cry if she could. “...tie it on for me?”

He knots it carefully around one of her limbs. Pulls her gorilla-sized body in for a hug, buries his face in her shoulder. “I’m sorry.” His voice cracks. “I’ve missed you for so long I don't even know what to say... I tried to make you proud.” 

Julia embraces him. If she remembers hard enough, she can pretend to feel his touch. “Tell me about it?”

  
\------------------------

  
Julia does sick flips and sweet tricks with Carey and Killian (who really need to get a room already). She meets Angus and when she tells him about how she died, he promises to investigate.

She pranks Taako and smiths Merle a new handaxe and loves her husband. She repurposes her smithing skills to redesign her robot body.

Julia makes a new body that’s humanoid, that looks like she used to. It’s cold and wrong and fits like a too-small shirt, scratchy and uncomfortable.

She makes another one that’s hug-sized and can also kick ass. She keeps the red handkerchief on at all times.

Magnus goes to Refuge and Lucretia won’t let her got with and he comes back broken.

  
\------------------------

  
Julia’s no stranger to broken things. She’s one herself.

  
\------------------------

  
“There was a chalice,” he tells her that night when he can’t sleep and clings to her like a lifeline. “And it said...”

“Hm?”

He’s crying, soft and low. “I... I’m sorry, Jules, I should’ve... you didn’t have to die. I could’ve, could’ve changed the past, brought you and Steven out of Ravens’ Roost with me.”

She cuddles closer to him.

“But I’d’ve had to change the timeline, and, and, and...”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Julia tells him honestly. “Did I ever tell you about Theresa?”

  
\------------------------

  
Magnus shows her the paper he got from June a week later. “I didn’t know how to say this,” he admits, nervous and twisting his bracer round and round his arm. “But I got this? And I don't know what it means?”

Julia looks at it. It can’t be right, because her Magnus, Magnus who cries at music and puppies and the sound of her voice can’t be someone so evil. “You’re... you’re a Red Robe,” she says slowly.

He isn’t shocked or scared. Just... confused. “I... you staticked out there, Jules.”

Maybe her voice box’s on the fritz. She gives him back the parchment, double-checks her vocal system.

  
\------------------------

  
The Bureau of Balance has recovered five grand relics. Lucretia has them all in training that’s more intense than ever before.

Team Sweet Flips practices stunts and maneuvers. Julia learns how to throw Carey with deadly accuracy, and then to shoot her crossbow in the same movement.

Tres Horny Bois stay at the Icosagon even later than they do. Magnus comes home exhausted, but they make time to be together. They always have.

Magnus and Julia walk the quad of the moon base one night as a star winks out above them.

  
\------------------------

  
Magnus goes into Wonderland. She ties her red handkerchief around his neck, for luck.

  
\------------------------

  
Magnus goes into Wonderland and doesn’t come out.

  
\------------------------

  
Taako and Merle bring back the Animus Bell and flimsy excuses and a mannequin with a red handkerchief around its neck.

The loss of her husband slams into Julia’s robotic body like a train, and she falls and doesn’t get back up. She breaks, and her body doesn’t even give her tears to cry.

  
\------------------------

  
She’d give him her second life in a heartbeat, if she still had a beating heart, if his heart still beat, fast and red and red as the handkerchief that smells like lavender that they gave to a mannequin and brought no body, the handkerchief that smells like flowers and grandmas and rocking chairs that take Magnus away and--

Taako slips the Band of Telepathic Thought onto her arm as he and Merle and the mannequin leave the hanger.

  
\------------------------

  
“Jules,” says Magnus’s voice. “Jules. Hun. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

Julia’s looking around desperately, but he doesn’t jump out of the pod or pop out of a bush or anything to say it was all a goof.

The voice speaks from her mind. “I’m okay. I’m alive. I’m alive.”

He’s in a mannequin body and they’re negotiating with Garfield-- who has his body, his real one!-- and Magnus is going to the voidfish.

"I’ll come,” she tells him. “Let me come. Let me help protect you.”

“Jules, the Hunger’s coming,” he says, and he sounds panicked, now. She understands every word. There’s no static. “You need to be ready. Please. Please.”

Julia and Carey and Killian take up defensive positions on the quad. She kicks the Hunger’s ass and talks to Magnus and the voidfish. He is a grounding presence in her mind as the world is ending until-- “I love you, Jules”-- and he’s gone.

She screams. Punches a slobbering black Hunger-dog off the edge of the moon base. Saves Carey’s life.

Magnus might come back but he might not and the uncertainty is even worse than knowing.

  
\------------------------

  
They make it to Lucretia's dome, where everything has fallen apart. Magnus is there, but he's pointing his sword at the Director and Taako’s counting down and Davenport is saying that they need to go--

\--and the Hunger comes slamming through the roof.

  
\------------------------

  
Lup returns and Julia already likes her. Her style, her presence. They're going to be great friends once all is said and done.

  
\------------------------

  
Magnus and Julia embrace, a thousand words unsaid. She leaves to secure the moon base with Team Sweet Flips. He takes Junior and promises to bring her the handkerchief back.

  
\------------------------

  
Julia is helping Brad to his feet when a green light flashes and she hears the story. 

One hundred years of running and fighting and being, and its all culminated here. She sees her husband fight a Power Bear and die trying to eat hard candy. She sees the Hunger consuming plane after plane, and now it has come for them, too. 

For a moment, Julia is afraid. 

And then the blue light touches her, and Julia hears a song.

  
\------------------------

  
Magnus runs out of the dome with a grin and a red handkerchief. Julia pulls him close, and he ties it around her arm. 

But then a sphere falls. It's made of Hunger, the owl and the wolf and the bear, and she is separated from her husband as the fight begins. 

Julia and Carey and Killian fuck up the owl. 

She's pulling Killian out of the way of its talons when the wolf pounces on Magnus, and he's too far away to reach and he's got no second life and--

Avi arrives just in time. 

“No dogs on the moon,” he says with a grin, and turns back to her still smiling. Julia loves him, and wants to tell him so for another hundred years.

  
\------------------------

  
There is a Judge over the Stillwater Sea. There is also a floating laboratory. 

Magnus has always been the rusher. Julia likes rushing, too. But since her days at Ravens’ Roost, she knows that the most important fights are the ones you plan for. 

And, a lot of the time, plans go awry. So you make new ones. You weigh the risk and the cost with the gain, and you make a decision. 

The lab is empty when Julia scans it.

  
\------------------------

  
She takes Magnus’s hand. Unties the kerchief from her arm, knots it carefully around his neck. “For luck,” she says, and her voice doesn't shake. She knows exactly what she's doing. “Magnus. I love you. I don't want to go, but...”

He looks scared. “Jules?”

“But this has to be done. I... I'm so proud of you. I love you. I love you.”

She takes a step towards the edge, and is caught by Magnus’s embrace. “I love you too, Jules. I love you. I love you.”

She sees him still clutching onto her hug-sized robot body as her soul exits and flies towards Lucas’s lab.

  
\------------------------

  
Julia’s broken, but that's not a bad thing. She's never needed to be whole-- just strong enough to do what must be done.

  
\------------------------

  
“Long time no see,” Julia says to Magnus on an island in the Sea of Souls. He's still wearing the handkerchief. 

"I missed you,” he says, voice breaking as they embrace. 

They turn hand in hand to the house she built. It's not the prettiest. One of the window boxes hangs at an angle, and the door doesn't shut all the way. It's a broken house filled with broken people. It's an imperfect home filled with dogs and goldfish and love. 

It's all Julia’s ever wanted.

 

\------------------------

  
Magnus hands her the red handkerchief, and she pulls her hair back.

"This still smells like grandmas,” she teases.

He laughs, takes her hand.

  
\------------------------

  
We see them one last time as Magnus and Julia... rush in. 


End file.
